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Thursday, September 27, 2018

What did you once agree to?

This is one of the reasons I LOVE working with the Deep Past. Once we understand what we agreed to, everything changes!

I agreed to help my brother

I feel like I write about this a lot, so you'll just have to humor me. My older brother was born severely and multiply disabled with an undiagnosed chronic degenerative condition, and being the next-oldest sibling was rough. I always referred to myself as "the acting eldest" and helped a lot with him and my younger siblings. I was very resentful about it.

When I was 14, I went into the mountains to pray and ask God WHY.

...He let me remember!

I remembered specifically ASKING to be his sister, before I was born. Did I say I "asked?" What I remembered was demanding it. I was literally saying, "I will ONLY go to Earth if the following condition is met..."

Remembering that changed my entire life. I realized: wow. My life is not this curse I had made it out to be. The hardest challenge of my life is something I DEMANDED. What?!?!

A lot of people are uncomfortable with this possibility, but today I'm asking you to ask yourself: what if the hardest challenge in your life right now was something you asked for specifically?

What if the thing you are struggling with right now is something you explicitly requested to go through?

How would that change your perspective on it?

"you can never complain again"

When I received that memory at age 14, the memory of demanding to come down to help my brother in his disabled body, I was completely stunned. Just absolutely shocked. It had literally never occurred to me that I might have had a hand in the decision for me to be born into my brother's family. I just figured all life events were kind of decided by God, either out of His all-loving omniscience that sure seems malicious sometimes, or by Him sort of rolling the dice and seeing what fell.

The idea that I had had a role in selecting my own life situation just blew my mind.

I remember sitting there in the mountains with my mind just reeling.

It was then that I heard that voice: "You can never complain again."

...and it was right! I couldn't! What was there to complain about now? I specifically remembered that I was actually getting my number one request in life. My number one request in life was my biggest challenge at that time (and frankly, my role as my brother's sister is STILL what I consider to be the most difficult challenge of my life so far, and he has been dead for years now).

But it was what I wanted to go through.

I didn't remember WHY I wanted to go through it, but somehow that hasn't mattered very much to me yet. Just knowing that I DID want to experience it made such a huge difference.

assignments we agreed to

Not everyone believes in a God of informed consent. But after that experience I had, I totally do.

I do honestly believe that our lives, in every aspect, were agreed to to some degree before we were born.

I believe that sometimes we demanded certain aspects of our lives, even difficult ones.

I believe that sometimes God asked us if we would take on certain missions. Like callings at church: Him asking for our consent before issuing the rules.

I believe that sometimes loved ones and friends would present their ideas to us for how we could help each other on our life journeys, and that sometimes we agreed to their ideas.

I believe we made contracts and agreements with each other, and we accepted assignments from God directly.

Like President Kimball said, we don't remember the particulars of these assignments--but they still exist and we still enact them (unless we are ignoring or fighting the voice of Spirit in our lives... agency is everything).

What in your life is an assignment you agreed to?

Does this change your perspective on it?

challenge for today

Today, your self-healing challenge is to spend some time thinking about some of the challenges of your life in this context. All this challenge is, is to be open to the ideas that come to you about them.

Here are some questions to get your mind thinking:

- Was this experience something I may have actually asked for or chosen before I was born?

- Does this feel like an assignment with God, a contract with someone else in my life, or even a premortal decision of my own?

- What perspective shift is in order depending on the Deep Past origin of this challenge in my life?

If you feel so moved, you might write down your thoughts. But this challenge is not to provide any hard answers. It's just to be open to any shifts that might come in your thinking.

As always, I would love to hear your stories with this exercise if you do it.